An engineering odyssey

Where was the engineer born? For Hari's mother, it was the richly academic environment that she kept at home over the years that sowed the seeds. She, unlike his father, believed that more than the genes or anything it was just the way of upbringing that brought Hari all the way. Hari's father though, liked to believe that it was merely a transmission of genes from father to son. He always thought that Hari's extraordinary mathematical ability was solely a gift that he gave to his son. Reality though had different ideas. The engineer had long died a slow death which both of them were quite oblivious to. Today, on the day of Hari's convocation, let us go back to try and see the things squarely in the absence of a supreme judge.

A few years ago, when Hari came to this best engineering college he was more than excited. After passing the entrance test with flying colours, he had chosen electrical engineering side and right from day one, he had devoted as much time as possible towards his academics. Somewhere something went wrong though. In my reckoning, it would be more than unfair to call it wrong because time is yet to decide that. It is very difficult indeed to point out the time where the death process began for Hari did seem to enjoy even academics for some time, initially. He got swept by the wave of public opinion and all those 'cool' things somewhere along the line and renounced academics for his passion for management.

Luckily for Hari, in the following years he got more than one opportunities to take his management lessons. Sometimes it was his lab, lab viva or examinations. He learned the rule #1 of management - Talking about things that you don't know, doing things that you have absolutely no idea about and eventually getting your way out. Like many of his counterparts, blasphemy had not yet been imbibed in him which is why he carried on. For whatever hatred that he developed towards engineering there was always a happy, content and relaxed Hari as soon as he used to come back to his hostel and go out with his friend.

His management lessons were getting more and more intense as the time progressed. At the end of his junior undergraduate year he went to a cement company and worked for 2 months. It used to be called as "Practical Training" and Hari had mastered these by now. For a mere sum of 5000 rupees a month, he came up with a grand idea of new development technique for the cement company which would save the firm about 3 crores rupees every year. All his fellows displayed their high intellect in similar fashion, wherever they went. Yet for some reason he was still paid just 5000 rupees.

In his undergraduate year, he was made to carry out a project as a part of his thesis. This was his penultimate test of management. He did quite well there too. It was there that he learned that the HR side of management also holds some practical relevance. Going by the title, it seemed like a project of the century. Building an electric motor vehicle and propulsion system or something like that. Hari was smart enough by this time to have no problems with this one. Also, with the advent of popular sites like www.google.com, the task was never any easier for him. He made sure that his final presentation looked like a professional's one. Thereafter he gave it at the best binding shop. He could do at least this much.

The D-Day of his ultimate test arrived. It was his grand viva. For someone who has given up on academics 2-3 years ago, it was always going to be an intimidating challenge to learn everything in so less a time. Yet with the heart of a man he went to face the professors. Quite expectedly Hari wasn't having a good time there. They kept on asking questions and Hari kept on thinking. Finally a frustrated professor asked Hari. "A very simple question for you, how do you calculate the horse power of a horse?"
Hari had to say something on this one. Silence. The professor looks in his eyes. Hari looks down. Finally, he opens his mouth. "Sir, you take a horse, burn it and measure it's calorific value!"

Bang! The door was shut on him. That was how it all ended.

Today on the day of convocation, he is out there with his parents and he has been awarded the B.Tech. degree. He looks at it carefully and gifts the "Tech." part to his parents. For them to cherish the memories of their engineer son and for him to officially relinquish the "Tech." part associated with himself. With just that one letter "B." he gets all the confidence to conquer the world for he firmly believes that it is this magical letter that separates him from the rest.

On this momentous day for Hari and his parents let us not discuss whether he did right or wrong. Instead let us do one good thing that we certainly can. We wish him all the luck for future.

Perfect strangers

Today morning when I woke up, I realized that I needed to get all the redundant stuff removed from my wallet. Some old phone numbers of the people whom I don't remember anymore, random visiting cards,bills dated ages ago etc. I have always had the habit of accumulating a lot of junk which I might never need. As my wallet was almost 2 inches thick by now, it was high time that I got started with the cleansing act. I found a small yellow paper with 1 or 2 names and email addresses written on it. Also, on the back side there was a name 'Kaciane' and her phone number written in blue ink. That takes me a few months back.

Yes, to the good old days in Stuttgart. I do not remember missing anything in my life as much as I miss Germany. It was one more of those world cup days in the month of June. If I am not mistaken, it was sometime near the end of June. I came from the office at about 5 p.m. and was lying on my bed when I suddenly recalled that there was an England game that day. With a hope to see Beckham bend those special ones, I caught the train to Hauptbahnhoff or the main station. I could afford this liberty of traveling at my will thanks to the free train pass I had for the month of June. I got down at Stadtmitte and went to the Fan Fest. As always, the space was quite lively with diverse groups from all over the world wearing their flags, showing their national spirits. It was a sight to witness. There were more than 10,000 people at the Stadtmitte. The British fans or hooligans, as they are famously called, were making their presence felt. One could feel some nice little battles between these European giants. It was there that I learned that the Brits aren't great fans of the Germans or the French but surprisingly they get along quite well with the Dutch. The Germans don't like the Brits and hate the Dutch to the core.I doubt if any country in this world really enjoys the company of the French people. Then, I went inside the Fan Fest area where there was a huge screen placed in front and more than 5000 people either sitting or standing and relaxing themselves, drinking beer, eating sausages and many other food items. A 5 euro beer was a bit too expensive for a lowly paid intern that I was and I decided to go in the front and enjoy the game.

As the game progressed, I found myself standing amongst a few enthusiastic English fans wearing their T-Shirts, flags painted on their cheeks and shouting for Wayne Rooney. There was a slightly bald guy in his 40s or late 30s probably standing just next to me and accompanied by his wife/partner/girlfriend and their 2 children, wearing the England jersey. As barely anything was happening in the game, people indulged in some light talks as it was just a league game. So, this lady (his wife/ girlfriend) started a conversation with me...maybe because she wasn't of British origin and therefore wasn't exactly as white as the others. No, but that sure wasn't the case with the Germans. Then she asked me where I was from and what I was doing there and the talks began.

She wasn't a very beautiful woman or anything. She was wearing a nice red spaghetti and was at best fare but she was quite talkative. Her name was Kaciane. At first, I was quite glad to speak proper English, where I didn't need to stop after every sentence as I had been used to while in Germany. She told me that she was from Cyprus and then had moved to U.K. She was from London but lived in Stuttgart for 20 years or so. She was working as an English tutor for the corporates in Stuttgart. Then she introduced me to her partner and her sons.

We had some jokes about the Germans' English, she told her experiences in the past 20 years. Her partner told about his. He was quite excited to learn that I am from India for he was quite a regular visitor to Kolkata for some vague spiritual reasons. After a lot of days I had a nice talk with totally new people and had a great time.

Kaciane told me that they were always quite close to the Indian community in the U.K. and they used to go to the Indian restaurants quite often, in London as well as in Stuttgart. Following this she gave me her phone no and asked me to call anytime on the weekdays so that they could take me for dinner in an Indian restaurant. I was quite excited for it was a long time since I had had some nice spicy Indian food and started daydreaming about butter chicken and tandoori chicken. Meanwhile the match got over and we had those typical good-bye and will-call-you talks. I returned with a sense of achievement. I had made new friends of entirely different age group, ethnicity, colour and culture. More importantly I was to get a free Indian dinner and couldn't resist that temptation.

After about a week I called her up asking if they were free. Unfortunately, that day her sister from U.K. had come and they were going out and she asked me to call in the next week. The next week was the first week of July. My train pass had expired. Now, to go to Stadtmitte and come back, it would have cost me 4.4 euros. A normal meal which I used to cook, cost me less than 1 euro. This Indian dinner treat was no longer free. With the temptation for saving 3.4 euros I never called her up. I came back to India and almost forgot about everything. Everything comes back to me as I am removing all the stuff which I no longer need and the question comes to my mind as to what do I do with this paper. It has the sweet memories of the great hospitality shown by complete strangers and also associated with it is the fact, which certainly doesn't make me feel proud, that for a meager sum of 3.3 euros I did not return the elegant conduct that was required out of me. But then, life's long or so I feel. I might go to Stuttgart someday. She might still be there and maybe that time I would call and take them for dinner...or so do I convince myself and put that yellow paper in my wallet for it's the sweet memories associated with that paper that I don't want to get rid of. Maybe next time.....

It's time to fly

I don't exactly remember when did I acquire this habit, not that its strange or unique or anything, that I simply can't start my day without newspapers. For quite some days recently my newspaperwala is testing my patience by either giving me HT, Telegraph or no newspaper at all. This has finally diverted me into reading the e-paper on www.timesofindia.com.

So, like every other day, I woke up today morning to find out that once again I have to log in to the timeswebsite. Just as I went there, I found a headline saying -
" 71% say they are proud to be Indians."
It was certainly a news worth reading into and after I was done with it, I was quite astonished to know that this 71% comes from all over the nation...from metros also.

So, like Mr.Maugham starts in 'The Razor's Edge', here also, The man I am writing about is not famous, and probably he never will be. Coincidentally, he is one amongst those 71%.

He is really a very simple man. Ya, he does read a bit of newspaper everyday but that's all there is to it. Also, that habit of reading the newspaper, which he has cultivated over the years, hasn't really improved his general knowledge in any sense. Ya he surely does know the corporators and MLAs in his locality but when it comes to simple trivia like the name of George Bush's shoemaker's daughter's school's Headmaster's Son's girlfriend, he is found speechless.

For some vague reasons, he follows the civic elections quite curiously but more stupefying was the fact that he shows no interest in the US presidential elections. Not that he is particularly uninterested in the international politics only, he is clueless about the celebrities also. Of course he does know a lot about the Indian cinema but surprisingly he didn't quite enjoy the movies by the hollywood greats like Jim Carrey or Quentin Tarantino.

Astonishingly, his music tastes are also quite unrefined. I don't really know where did he form his impression that Indian Classical music is older and also probably more melodious than the western giants. In fact he's so naive that I have once heard him claim that Classical Music Ragas have been a result of research for hundreds of years and there is a vast theory behind the kind of music to be played at a particular time of the day. In spite of all this I didn't give up. I made him listen to a few Beatles songs and passed some important facts like in which Beatles song, the lead guitarist's girlfriend got impressed by his friend and then ran away with him and then how they were separated later on. But these interesting facts didn't impress him and his impression remained more or less the same.

Well, he certainly can read and write English. He does read the TOI everyday. When I asked him out of curiosity the reason why he reads the TOI, he said he quite admired "You said it" by R.K.Laxman for his satirical take on the things in the Indian Society. He simply adored the concept of Common Man. I could not help but pity his sense of humor. I asked him if he had read Dilbert or such other American cartoons and surprisingly he had but he didn't find them funny. I knew that he needed some time to mature.

Recently, I met him after a long time. I asked him how he was doing and he told me about his recent project of working as a social worker in the red light area. While working for the welfare of prostitutes there, much to his horror he found out that a lot of sex workers are gays. He felt the strong need to have some kind of a legislation for gays in India. On hearing this, I asked him whether he knew about the gay rights in U.S. and England. He was oblivious to such things. He didn't even know the much publicized gay marriage of Elton John for he didn't know Elton John either. I gave him a lot of inputs from my side about the state of affairs in the U.S. and U.K. but he was expressionless.

If all this insanity, weirdness, indifference to the world were not enough he has reached a new pinnacle now. This is certainly going to make him a subject of mockery. He is too naive to realize why no matter where he goes people will laugh at him. He is going to be a subject of derision by his contemporaries. Well, I quite forgot to tell you why, right? He has bought a new T-Shirt saying - "India Poised, its time to fly!"